- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Iohan B. who was born in Ilva Mare, Romania in 1923, one of seven children in a poor family. He recalls attending a Jewish school until the seventh grade, then high school; quitting school to work at age fourteen and a half; becoming a licensed mechanic; Hungarian occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions; firing of all Jews from his factory ; refusing to emigrate because he did not want to leave his parents; ghettoization with his family in Bistrița ghetto for three weeks; and deportation to Auschwitz. Mr. B. describes the pain of seeing his family suffer; separation from his father and brother in a transport to Buchenwald; working in a munitions factory in Bochum; praying to die; liberation by British troops; returning to Ilve Mare to seek surviving family; initially finding no other Jews; the return of two of his sisters; learning of his father's and brother's deaths; living with an aunt in a nearby town; marriage; and emigration to the United States in 1966. He discusses a visit with his son to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the vivid return of his memory while there.
- Author/Creator
- B., Iohan, 1923-
- Published
- Baltimore, Md. : Baltimore Jewish Council, 1989
- Interview Date
- October 29, 1989.
- Locale
- Romania
Bistrița
Ilva Mare (Romania)
Bistrița (Bistrița-Năsăud, Romania)
- Cite As
- Iohan B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1337). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Wasserkrug, Irene, interviewer.
Zerivitz, Mitzi, interviewer.